Writers appear to use marijuana more than visual artists. In
view of the difficulties that most people have in reading while they are stoned, it may seem surprising that writing under the influence of marijuana is so common. It is difficult to know how many well-known writers have used marijuana while working, for what is considered appropriate and allowable for the jazz or rock musician is regarded somewhat differently by the public when it comes to the work of journalists, novelists, critics, and even poets. There are, of course, a few prominent exceptions, like William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Norman Mailer, but they occupy a special niche in American letters. Burroughs wrote parts of Naked Lunch while he was high, explaining in a magazine article that "cannabis serves as a guide to psychic areas which can then be re-entered without it." He added that he had discontinued using marijuana in this way in favor of achieving similar results by nonchemical means.[20]"I write all my stories while stoned," says a younger writer of fiction who has just sold her first two efforts. "Coupled with good music, marijuana relaxes the control I try to harness to the creative flow and lets the idea develop itself, producing a more natural story." The key here is the link between the twin needs of control and creative flow, and writing under the influence of marijuana requires that special attention be given to the balance between these frequently competing forces. The most common solution is for a writer to work on a first draft while stoned and then to go over it later, eliminating excesses and unsuccessful experiments. Like many artists, some writers find it more useful to do their thinking high, preferring not to be stoned during the actual production stages. As one essayist put it:
I just can't write well on grass. My grammar and syntax get screwed up, and I get caught in the details. I do some of my thinking stoned, and I will write outlines after smoking, but I'll try to structure them in such a way that I can fill in the details later on.
The most common pattern, then, is that the creative part of
writing is done stoned, and the more linear work is done straight. For one book
reviewer, the creative work comes in the editing stages, which means that his
preferred way of writing is an inversion of the norm:
I have tried to write stoned, but it doesn't work. My mind has no control over the flow, so everything whizzes out too fast and generally makes little sense afterward. Now I write straight, and then I edit my work when I'm high. That way, my concentration is on what I'm doing, yet my mind is still relaxed enough to be really abstract. I can change things that didn't work, and come up with fresher images and ideas.
A retired professor of psychology takes this process one step
further, using marijuana to solve specific writing problems as they arise. When
he comes to a passage that doesn't flow as smoothly as he thinks it ought to,
he'll stop, light a joint, put on the headphones with classical music (he says
it blocks out the noise of the typewriter), and this, he claims, will usually
get him past the difficult spot. "Part of me is absorbed in the music and
the high," he explains, "while the other part is writing, uplifted by
the first part."
Both the professor and the book reviewer use marijuana in
essentially the same way, and both feel that creative work is sometimes helped
by the merging of two different states of consciousness. A few writers, like
this Boston poet, use
marijuana for the execution of their writing:
I often write while I'm stoned. I did most of my dissertation that way, and quite a number of published poems and articles. This does not mean that I turned in exactly what I wrote under the influence. I always revise a lot—including some revisions while I am stoned—and always double-check and adjust things when I'm not. Still, I generally allow a few doper's ramblings to get by. It's a juggling act.
Karen is a Radcliffe student who won a poetry contest on the
basis of a poem she wrote the first time she was stoned. Her concern here is
less with the process of the creation than with the attitudes she has noticed
on the part of those who would discredit her experience:
I keep reading these articles about people who think they're getting all these profound revelations when they're stoned, and going and painting or something, and then you find out that they've painted the hangnail on their big toe and weren't very creative or anything, really. And this is supposed to prove that people aren't creative on grass; they just think they are. Well, I've met plenty of these idiots, but they don't know anything about poetry or art when they're down, either. Grass doesn't give you anything you don't have potentially—it just brings out what's there.[21]